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Proud homeschooling mom of 3 so far, Irish cradle Catholic, 3rd generation Red Sox fan, bookworm, and fitness video collector. I'm a New England Yankee at heart but have spent 10 of the past dozen years out here in Cali.

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DH: mycollege sweetheart and now husband of twelve years.Miss Scarlet: our oldest DD, age 9. She is in 5th grade and loves reading, creative writing, science, computer programming, drawing, and baking.Rusty, our DS, almost 7.He is in 1st grade and loves reading, science, history, drama, and anything mechanical.Princess Persimmon, ouryounger DD, who is 3 and loves getting into *everything!* She has autism and is currently attending a special day class.

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Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Does "School Choice" Increase Segregation?

Professors Salvatore Saporito and Deenesh Sohoni of the sociology department at William & Mary are using high-tech geographic information system (GIS) technology to examine the racial composition of public schools in 22 large urban districts. The GIS approach allowed the researchers to correlate each school's area of service with U.S. Census Bureau data on the racial and ethnic mix of children living in the same area. They then compared that information to the actual enrollment statistics for schools to see if the racial mix of the public schools matched that of the neighborhoods they served.

In a provocatively titled article for Ideation magazine called "School Choice Increases School Segregation", Drs. Saporito and Sohoni conclude that public schools have fewer white children enrolled than would be expected given the demographics of their neighborhood, particularly when neighborhoods are mostly integrated. Public schools with private, parochial, and/or magnet schools within their boundaries have an even greater underrepresentation of white children than public schools without nearby private, parochial, or magnet schools.

The William & Mary researchers found that in neighborhoods without a private, parochial, or magnet school, there was an approximately 10% gap between the number of white children in the population and enrolled in the public school. Having a single private, parochial, or magnet school in the neighborhood increased this difference to 12%. Having four increased the difference to 20%.

Drs. Saporito and Sohoni use their data to argue that "school choice increases racial segregation". The problem with this argument is that not all parents are equally free to choose their children's school! Only those who have the disposable income to pay private or parochial school tuition have true educational choice. This is where a voucher program for low-to-moderate income families would really help. It would allow poor families (who are disproportionately minority) the same freedom to choose private or parochial schools as their wealthier neighbors. In places where vouchers have been made available such as Milwaukee and Cleveland there have been tremendous benefits for minority students.

2 comments:

I agree with you, but vouchers scare me because whenever you take money from the government (even if it came from you in the first place), there are strings attached that control the use of the money. If we could have true choice, a voucher program would be great. But how do you defend such a concept against the NEA?

Of course the so called progressives use this to say parents shouldn't be able to choose where their kids attend school.

Instead of providing choices for everyone they want to ban choices for everyone.

Maybe we could do something like (I think it was Denmark) and the money would be tied to the children. Every child received X amount of funding and the parents were free to send the child to the school of their choice with the money.